Sunday, May 19th, Moldova had a gay pride parade. While it only lasted half a block it was still deemed a success and many international organizations helped support the local LGBT crowd. I joined our ambassador and country director for the event, feeling safer knowing that they were there, but my biggest worry was ‘what would happen at site?’ Well now that it’s the next day and I’m in my village I still am concerned. How many people saw the news? How many will confront me? Will I be able to stay here for my second year or will I have to move?

Being an LGBT volunteer in Moldova is what I imagine being an LGBT person in the 60s. Believe it or not there is a gay scene in Moldova but it is very underground. You have to know the right people to ‘gain entrance.’ We do have one club that is very LGBT friendly – they even have a rainbow painted around their doorway to let others know and within are various stickers protesting homophobia. Other than that many of the LGBT people tend to hang out with various EVS (European Volunteer Service) people and PCVs, since they know that we are LGBT friendly.

I’m very lucky that I have a great support network within the PC world and staff (HCNs – host country nationals and U.S.) who are open and supportive of me and my unique service. But when I come back to site I am a completely different person. Not only am I lying about who I am attracted to but also who I am at my very core. My village has accepted me for the most part – my coworkers at school come to me and seem genuinely seem interested in talking to me – but how can I develop a relationship with someone if they don’t even know who I am? Knowing that if they knew the truth, they would shun me or take me to the priest to be ‘healed.’ Knowing that when I return to the states to begin my gender transition, I will never be able to keep in contact with them, except by email, for once I start hormones my voice will change.

I live with a grandmother who happens to be very open. We enjoy each others company and we’ve had some great times. Once, over a few shots of home-made rakiu, I even changed her mind on gay-marriage by telling her that love is love and this world is hard enough alone. If you can find someone to share your struggles, and victories, with then you should be allowed to marry them. You see even during pre-service training I was somehow ‘popular’ with many of the HCNs even though I dressed oddly. I guess the one good thing about being a stranger in strange lands is that you are a stranger. How do they know that what you are doing is odd, different, or strange?

It’s a mix of a blessing being in a country full of such ignorance but also a curse. People tend to see what they want to see, you could walk around with a LGBT flag and they would comment about how pretty the colors are, but once the words LGBT are involved then it’s a completely different story.

SAN FRANCISCO /May 21, 2013/ — LGBT Returned Peace Corps Volunteers applaud the Peace Corps for its announcement today that the agency will now accept applications from same-sex domestic partners who wish to serve together as volunteers overseas.

“Peace Corps service is an amazing experience, and the organization has long been friendly to LGBT volunteers” says Mike Learned, national coordinator of the LGBT RPCVs. “Accepting gay couples to serve is a major milestone for a great organization and for equality.”

LGBT RPCVs is an organization of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Peace Corps alumni (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers) that promotes Peace Corps ideals and the legal, political, and social rights of LGBT people around the world.

Founded in 1991, the organization has members around the world. It produces an online newsletter and operates a mentorship program for LGBT Americans considering service with the Peace Corps.

Recently I met with Kevin Lo, Director of Advocacy and Legal Services for ORAM – Organization for Refuge, Asylum & Migration. ORAM is the leading advocate for refugees fleeing persecution based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity. ORAM works closely with governments, inter-governmental agencies, and NGOs, building their capacity to protect LGBTI people. ORAM conducts groundbreaking research, offers a robust training program for refugee experts worldwide, produces top-notch publications, and offers direct legal representation, ensuring that the concerns of LGBTI refugees are heard in key domestic and international arenas. Most recently ORAM released an extensive report on the challenges confronted by urban LGBTI refugees in Mexico, Uganda, and South Africa, along with a comprehensive set of recommendations for refugee officials. For more information, please go to http://oraminternational.org/en/publications.

A transgender refugee talks about her difficult life in South Africa.

Kevin reached out to me and our organization because our current and recent PCVs would be wonderful resources about current country conditions, laws, and restrictions facing LGBTI communities around the world. Our knowledge and insight would be invaluable in assisting LGBTI people seeking refugee status and asylum.

This is something I’ve done on an individual basis a number of times over the years, contacting current or recent volunteers and forwarding information to lawyers and other advocates working on such asylum cases. We decided that the quickest and easiest way to reach current and recent LGBTI PCVs would be through (1) our listserv with new posts by Kevin seeking information, (2) the extensive archives of international news and information that Alan Silverman has posted on the listserv, and (3) our website articles themselves.

Kevin has posted messages on our listserv and has already had some success. For example, in response to ORAM’s request for country condition information regarding LGBTI people in Burkina Faso, RPCV Mark Canavera was able to draw on his West Africa experience to recommend some key NGO contacts.

In summary, ORAM and the LGBT RPCV are excited to launch this joint initiative supporting safety for LGBTI people everywhere. Participating PCV members will provide their knowledge of LGBTI conditions in various countries for reports and analyses informing refugee status decisions and policy. ORAM also conducts trainings and outreach around the world, providing PCV members with opportunities to learn more about regional LGBTI refugee issues and to co-sponsor events.

For me, being gay in Morocco is difficult but not unmanageable. Though many people in my small town in the Little Sahara consider themselves more laid-back and open-minded than the Moroccan standard, I would never out myself to anyone here. I don’t find being in the closet here all that difficult, though, because it just doesn’t come up that much.

Yes, people ask me all the time whether I’m married and if I’d like to have a Moroccan husband. I come up with silly, inaccurate answers to these questions that often leave the impression that I have something against Moroccans. I hate that I give that impression, but straight volunteers probably have that problem as much as queer ones – a lot of the difficulty there can be chalked up to language barriers. I have just as hard a time with the idea of being asked whether I’d like to marry someone I’ve never met as I do with the idea of marrying a man, but it’s a lot easier to say, “No, I don’t want to marry a Moroccan,” than it is to say, “It creeps me out that you just asked me to marry your barber without any mention of our common interests or a suggestion that we go to dinner.”

To be a queer PCV in Morocco (or to be a queer person in most parts of the world), you almost have to come to terms with compartmentalizing, i.e., letting the people in your community get to know the parts of you that they will find acceptable. Having just come out in the U.S. a few years ago, I hate having to disintegrate the parts of myself when I was just beginning to enjoy this newfound whole. I don’t see a way around it, though—I’ve never heard a story of someone being out in their community and still managing to integrate. Homosexuality is illegal. Most (not all) Muslim Moroccans will tell you it’s against Islam, and even most (not all) non-Muslim Moroccans still hold that homosexuality is un-Moroccan.

I have a mix of mechanisms that help me handle having to compartmentalize in my community. First, I’m out among fellow PCVs. In fact, being a pretty private person, I’m way more out among PCVs than I am among groups in the States. I’ve outed myself here more than usual both to create a support network for myself and to let other people, who might feel isolated, know that they’re not alone.

Next, Peace Corps Morocco’s LGBT support group, Pride Morocco, offers more overt, official support and functions as my queer social group. We meet quarterly to discuss how we can serve as allies for one another. For example, after having identified that several uncomfortable or inappropriate interactions have taken place between LGBT volunteers and PC staff members, we’re working now on coordinating a Safe Zone training for Peace Corps staff. We also use our meetings to hang out, bond, and, when need be, commiserate.

Finally, it’s important to me to be involved in the LGBT rights and support groups that were important to me before I joined the Peace Corps. Although my involvement in these groups from Morocco is limited by distance and technology, I think it’s mentally healthy to offer myself opportunities to face the challenges of being gay positively and constructively. It also gives me perspective to remember that the challenges I face in Morocco aren’t Moroccan or Muslim problems. My involvement in a support group at my alma mater regularly reminds that being LGBT in the States can be just as hard as it can be in Morocco (at an inter-personal level, at least; it gets trickier at a legal level). Having this kind of perspective helps me direct my frustrations more appropriately.

So my advice to you if you’re queer and you’re thinking about whether you should come to Morocco for 27 months is to go ahead and reconcile yourself to the near-fact that you’ll have to be mostly closeted while you live here and to be proactive about how you’re going to manage your mental health. Focus on creating a strong support network for yourself of people at home and in Morocco, and find ways to face frustrations and challenges through constructive channels.